Description: (Applicant's Description) The Behavioral Medicine and Oncology Program is focused on the interactions of biobehavioral, genetic, and environmental factors in the etiology of cancer, its treatment, and in quality of life of cancer patients and survivors. It also investigates primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention of cancer, focusing on behavior change as a means to modify or manage sources of risk for disease and to facilitate adherence and engagement in cancer prevention, screening, or risk evaluation programs. The general goals of the Program are 1) to conduct basic and applied biobehavioral and psychosocial research in these areas, 2) to provide empirically-based advanced research training in biobehavioral or psychosocial oncology and behavioral medicine, and 3) to provide psychological, psychiatric, and supportive, coping-oriented clinical services as an integral component of the comprehensive care of cancer patients and their families, and to evaluate their effect on disease progression and patient well-being. This mission requires broad participation of scientists and clinicians from several disciplines including psychology, psychiatry, immunology, molecular biology, neuroscience, medicine, and nursing. The primary strengths of the Program are its interdisciplinary and comprehensive approach to behavioral medicine and the application of research and theory in this emerging field to issues related to cancer. Investigation of unique sources of risk, barriers to treatment and factors involved in disease course and survival among African Americans is an integral part of Program activities. Research activities include studies of the role of stress and emotion in the etiology and progression of cancer, focusing on stress-related changes in immune and endocrine system activity, in health-impairing behaviors, and in adherence to risk management and early detection programs as mechanisms of influence. Interventions to help patients manage stress and its disease-related sequelae and studies of adjustment to cancer and cancer survival among patients and their families and investigation of basic and applied aspects of behavioral sources of risk for cancer, including tobacco and alcohol use, excessive sun exposure, and poor diet are also important research objectives of the Program.